


A Field of Flowers (okay, a plot)

by AngeNoir



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Community - Freeform, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Friendship, Gardens & Gardening, M/M, Stress Relief, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 21:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5944024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers needs something to do that relieves stress, something that wasn't deciding to pick fights at bars with assholes who made a wealth of remarks to get offended at. His running buddy, Sam, shows him the community garden. The community.</p><p>And then Steve meets the mysterious Tony-the-head-gardener, and he starts falling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Field of Flowers (okay, a plot)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neverever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverever/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Giant Pumpkin And The Garden Guy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4689128) by [Neverever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverever/pseuds/Neverever). 



> A remix of Neverever's "The Giant Pumpkin and the Garden Guy." I took the idea (community garden) and flipped some aspects (Tony as the head gardener instead of Steve) while keeping other aspects (Tony the giant-pumpkin-grower and Steve the flower garden guy). I hope this works!

Steve Rogers needed a hobby.

Or, at least, so he had been told, multiple times by everyone who knew him. He himself didn’t really think he needed one, but when he was considering heading out to a bar to get shit-faced and in a fight, well…

Then he was inclined to believe them.

There wasn’t much he could do, though. Not with his demanding schedule; he worked two jobs, and struggled to produce art for his graduate program at the same time. Even if he needed a way to relax, when the hell was he going to get it? _Where_ was he going to get it?

When he brought it up to his neighbor next door on their shared morning run, Sam laughed. “Have you tried growing things?”

Despite his misgivings, Steve gave up some hours of sleep on Saturday to visit the community garden on the top of his apartment building. He had never been to the roof – his apartment building was clean, well-kept, but he was either at CUNY, the coffee shop, or the bookstore. He rarely interacted with the people beyond his own circle; there was Bucky, the guy that he’d grown up with and was working at an auto shop after losing his arm in the war, Sam, who Steve had met on a morning run, and Natasha, the head of the leasing office who kept everything running smoothly and who had taken a particular shine to Steve after finding out how shy he was as a newcomer to NYC. In general, he kept to himself, left for his job pretty much by six in the morning, went to school in the afternoons, went to bars and drank his weight in beer, got into fights, went home around eleven or twelve at night to his two cats and dog. He wasn’t looking forward to walking out onto the roof where he’d be both out of his element and around people he didn’t know.

When Sam opened the roof access door (apparently you needed a key card to get through the door; you could apply for a roof access pass in the office), Steve immediately rethought his entire decision-making process.

It seemed like _everyone_ in the building was up there, even though it was barely eight in the morning. Hell, there were even kids present.

There was a fucking _greenhouse_.

“I think I’m just gonna—” Steve began, but Sam grabbed his arm and walked him down the narrow row of garden plots.

“My plot is back here; I want to try and do corn, just ‘cause it’s so versatile and can be a meal in and of itself, and finding fresh food in NYC? The prices are _ridiculous_. I think, though, it’s not going to work out—”

But Steve had stopped to stare, wide-eyed, at two giant pumpkins in the corner of the roof.

“Ah,” Sam said, grinning. “That plot is Tony’s. He’s the head of this little venture, makes sure everyone gets water and uses good tools, organizes who gets what plot. Makes small little plots available for kids. And competes in giant vegetable contests.”

“Huh,” Steve said.

A short young woman with really pale skin and scraggly-looking black hair lifted an eyebrow at them – Steve hadn’t even noticed her on her knees in the dirt among the zucchini and tomatoes – and growled, “Is this the hermit in 4B?”

“Hermit?” Steve spluttered.

Sam smiled at the woman. “Normally Trish is up here. I didn’t think you woke up before noon on the weekends?”

The woman rocked back on her heels, folding her arms. “Trish is out of town. Some big-shot interview or book tour or some shit.”

“Well, it’s nice to see you today anyway,” Sam replied easily. “Steve, this is Jessica. She’s Trish’s partner; Trish lives across from you in 4C.”

“Oh,” Steve said awkwardly, not sure what more was required from him. “Hello?”

Jessica’s other eyebrow went up. “I can see why he’s a hermit. Got the muscles but none of the personality?”

Steve felt his cheeks begin to flush, but Sam snickered. “Ignore Jessica; she’s the resident asshole. Well, not resident, but might as well be, with how often she’s over. She could give your James a run for his money.”

“No one’s as bad as Bucky,” Steve said, mostly on automatic, and then the tips of his ears went red. “I mean—”

“Hey, Sam! You’re up early today; who’s this? The guy you were talking about?”

Sam turned to smile at a blond-haired, tall Amazon who was hefting a bag of mulch in her arms. “Yeah, this is Steve, the guy I go running with.”

“Oh,” the woman said, and her mouth twitched up. “That wasn’t the guy I was talking about, but you know, who is this?”

“4B,” Sam said.

“Ohhhh, 4B,” the woman repeated, nodding her head.

Steve stared at her and was not quite sure he was happy that everyone seemed to know _about_ him despite him never meeting any of them. “Steve Rogers,” he said, putting his hand out.

“I’d shake but it’d be a pain to put this down and then pick it back up,” the woman laughed. “I’m Carol Danvers. I’m below you in 3B. You should come up more! We have small cookouts here sometimes, around all the plants. And we do community things – go bowling, go do laser tag, we have a book club.”

Steve had to admit he’d never even tried to learn about the community life in his apartment building – he’d been in dorms, as a freshman, but he’d focused heavily on learning and his classes, so he hadn’t interacted much with his roommates. He had no idea that there were even things to do as a group with the other tenants. He’d been looking at price and nearness to bus lines, and that had pretty much been it…

“Yeah, maybe,” he murmured as she walked down the lines of built-up plots to a small area. There were a bunch of people moving around, and there was a small baby seat with a tiny child nestled warmly in blankets. “So you grow things?”

“Yeah, well…” Sam shrugged. “It’s something that calms me down, you know?”

Being a therapist at the local VA chapter, it meant a lot. And considering that Steve was stressing out, trying to reach the end of his goal, to do more with his art, to make his mother proud… picking fights and ending each day drinking alone wasn’t doing it. He needed something to do.

“So how do I do this?” Steve sighed.

***

It turned out there was a surprisingly large amount of paperwork and research that went into becoming part of the community garden. From what Steve managed to figure out from Natasha’s booklets and paperwork, too many gardens were a structural threat to the roof, but it also kept heating and cooling costs down for the tenants. The building owner had reinforced the roof, created the laws and stuff, provided basic tools but not anything fancy, and people casually talked about Tony, the head of the garden who made sure everything worked smoothly. Tony normally interviewed potential gardens, but he was away for some reason or the other, so instead he got a sharp, tough young woman named Virginia Potts (“ _Pepper, Steve, please_ ”) who reviewed his application very thoroughly and then signed on the bottom.

“It’ll be nice to see a flower garden, Steve,” she said, smiling. “I hope you have fun.”

The interesting thing, though, was that it _was_ fun. It was frustrating as hell, it was a lot of physical work he hadn’t expected, and the repetitive work took his mind off the problems he was facing in his graduate program and at work with his dick of a coworker, Rumlow.

And then he began to run into the mysterious ‘head gardener.’

It started out as simply bumping into a slightly shorter guy with crazy hair and a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee. He said his apologies, the guy mumbled a little, and they passed each other – Steve going up onto the roof and the guy leaving. No one else was here – it was late at night, practically midnight, and Steve had just wanted the solitude that came from sitting, surrounded by the smell of greenery, and staring up at the night sky, even if the only points of light he’d see up there were planes. Rumlow had been a jerk again, his advisor in graduate school was being much less helpful than Steve needed him to be. Running at night was asking to get into trouble, and if he had decided to do gardening to relieve stress, well, he might as well try to go to the garden.

When he got up there, though, the giant pumpkins in the corner were covered with blankets, and a soft blue light illuminated that corner of the rooftop.

*

That was the first time he realized he’d run into the head gardener; the second time, it was because he’d – _accidentally,_ dammit! – taken someone else’s mulch to fertilize his flowers. Little green sprouts were poking up here and there, and he was suddenly super invested in making sure they survived. He’d seen the mulch and thought it was communal – the tools were communal, and the mulch was near the tools – and he’d come up to see some short, blond guy bitching to the head gardener (Tony, he remembered distantly).

Tony turned and his eyes narrowed as he saw Steve. In moments, he was stalking over. Closer, Steve realized the guy’s eyes had huge bags underneath, and he looked pale, washed-out.

Then the guy opened his mouth and Steve felt any stray points of sympathy for him dry up like water in the Sahara.

“You took someone’s property without asking. That mulch is _expensive_ , and I can’t have gardeners up here using other people’s property without so much as a ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’”

“Whoa,” Steve said, starting to feel his ire rise. “Look, it was near the communal tools, I didn’t realize—”

“Are you even aware of how expensive mulch is, let alone the good kind?” Tony interrupted him, pointing a finger at his chest. “If you went to buy your own tools and be serious about this, you’d know that!”

The blond guy was looking faintly embarrassed now, and someone else – someone pretty big and wide in the chest, his dark skin peppered with sweat from the midday sun – stood up and put a gentle hand on Tony’s shoulder. “Hey, Tones, how’re your pumpkins getting along?”

Those expressive brown eyes hardened, and Tony turned to the other man and folded his arms. “You’re trying to distract me and it’s not working.”

But the blond guy took that interruption and jumped in. “Look, Tony, I’m sorry – I was just making noise. It’s not that big of a deal; he knows, it was a mistake, and he won’t do it again. Will you, new guy?”

Realizing that he was being spoken to again, Steve jerked. “I won’t do it again. I wouldn’t have done it the first time if there’d be clear instructions somewhere.”

The blond guy and the giant winced as Tony’s facial expression turned into an affronted snarl. “Are you kidding me? You want clearer instructions?!”

“You’re up here to check on your buds, aren’t you?” the blond guy said desperately, grabbing Steve’s elbow. “C’mon, let’s go do that.”

As the blond guy dragged Steve away and the giant moved in front of Tony to keep him from following, Steve could hear Tony’s indignant voice, “I can be as pissed as I want, Rhodey, that _plebe_ had the gall to tell me my instructions need to be clearer!”

“Sorry about that,” the guy muttered, cheeks slightly pink – though that might have been the fresh air and sunlight. “I was – I wasn’t in a good mood, and Tony was ragging on me for leaving supplies out where he could trip, so I started – anyway, it’s cool. I mean, don’t use it again, please, but Tony’s just strung a little tightly today. I’m Clint, by the way.”

Steve let out an explosive breath. “Is he always that much of a dick?” he grumbled.

Clint let out a startled bark of laughter. “I mean, dick is his default setting, but he’s normally not that much of one. Look, if you need supplies or shit or anything, let me know; you can give me the money, and I got a pretty sweet deal at a small nursery for discounted prices.”

Muttering under his breath, Steve turned to his plants and glowered. “How do I keep bugs out of my things?” he asked. “That’s what I really need help with.”

“Oh, is that it?” Clint chuckled. “Let me show you what I came up with, and you can use it if you want.”

*

It had been almost seven days since Steve had managed to go up to the roof, and he was terrified he’d come back to a dead field of buds. At the very least, brown spots, wilted leaves, stunted growth—

But when he went to the roof the first day he had free, his plants looked perfectly fine.

His plot was near enough to Trish’s – Patricia, but she hated the name, and it was still kind of a dazzling new thing that he could _know_ people, know things about them like that (hermit might have been too apt of a word to describe him) – that he wandered over. “Hey, have you been watering my plants?” he asked.

She frowned, hands covered in muck. It was pretty late in the day, and the only other person up there was James Rhodes, the guy in 5A who had intervened for Steve the day Tony decided to dump shit on him. “No, no I haven’t. I didn’t realize you weren’t up here watering them.”

Steve looked around. To one side was Jane Foster’s plot of herbs, and the other side was Peter Parker’s beginner’s attempts at tomatoes (which, according to garden gossip, was a great beginner’s plant, but it was starting to look like Peter had a black thumb instead of green). Peter probably wasn’t up here regularly, and Jane also wasn’t. There were a few others who might have been watering his plants—

“Oh, Tony’s been doing it,” James said easily, lifting his head from where he was concentrating. “He didn’t want them to die.”

Tony? Steve blinked at his plants and felt something calm and even affectionate uncurl in his chest. “Well, tell him I said… thanks. I’ve had a pretty shitty week, and I was worried about… well. Thanks.”

James looked at him and then smiled. “If you come up early in the morning or late at night, you’d be more likely to catch him, you know. He’s pretty busy, but he always ends up here in the end.”

Steve made a small note in his mind as he turned to weed around the roots and make sure they were doing well.

*

He came one day pretty late at night, fists clenched and blood boiling. Tonight, Rumlow had gone too far with one of the waitresses and when Steve had stepped in, Rumlow had fired him, which meant now he needed to find a job, he needed to get his stuff, and he was just so _pissed_ —

“—doing okay, aren’t you?”

The words were crooned, slurred and soft, and Steve froze. From the pumpkins that were in the corner of the roof – three plots down from Steve – there was a soft blue light, and Steve could just make out a small, hunched form and a small chair.

It was a split second decision, but Steve moved away from his own slowly flowering buds to the pumpkin corner. “Tony?” he whispered.

The words cut off, and Tony looked up blearily at him. “You’re the hermit,” he said slowly.

Steve let out a small laugh. “I’m getting better at that. Came to this week’s cookout, even. You weren’t there.”

He hadn’t meant to say that last bit, to admit he’d been looking for Tony’s crazy hair and inane chatter that he liked to listen to whenever he managed to be in the garden at the same time as Tony. But Tony looked really out of it, sleepy and slow, and Steve made the executive decision to sit down next to Tony. He ended up having to wedge himself in, pulling Tony halfway on top of him, but he did it, trying to ignore the panicked, old Steve at the back of his head, yelling at him for being too forward. “Your pumpkins are amazing. What made you get started doing this, you know?”

Tony let out a long sigh and dropped his head against Steve’s shoulder. “I dunno,” he muttered, absently running his fingers over the back of Steve’s hand. “I just – wanted something that wasn’t going to shit on me, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” Steve murmured.

Tony grunted. “You don’t seem to have things going too bad for you, you know.”

“What would you know?” Steve grumbled, tension bleeding into his frame.

At that, Tony shifted against his chest, pulling back to look down at Steve. “I mean – you’re a grad student, right? That’s what your application said? You’ve got a pretty sweet garden growing there, Sam sings your praises all the time—”

“Yeah, but I work,” Steve said, voice short, and he was beginning to regret coming over here in the first place. “I work and I bust my ass to try and make rent and buy food and I just—”

Tony patted Steve’s chest absently and then laid back down. “We all got shit going down in our lives, then. I’m glad your garden looks so nice.”

Before Steve could really say anything in response to that, Tony’s body grew slightly heavier, his breathing evening out. Steve looked down at the mop of unruly hair and let out a soft, bitter laugh. Maybe Tony thought things were going great in his life, but Tony didn’t really know him.

The sudden desire to get to know Tony more, to have Tony know _him_ , took him by surprise, and he stubbornly closed his eyes. That way of thinking lay madness.

When he woke up in the morning, Tony was gone.

*

Steve looked around the bar curiously, loose enough to voice the thought that was on his mind. “Tony’s not here today?” he asked, leaning closer to James. From what Steve had understood – and seen – most of the social outings were paid for in part by Tony, and the head gardener attended as many of them as he could. Every time Steve went to one, though, Tony was never around. Steve was beginning to worry that Tony was avoiding him since their latest encounter.

It certainly seemed like everyone else in the entire apartment building was here today. It was at a pretty decent club, lights dim, everyone talking and laughing together. Sam was here, and it was finally revealed that his mystery beau was in fact James Rhodes; Peter Parker was here, a gangly teen-looking guy who was twenty-four but looked seventeen, camera hanging around his neck. Clint Barton was throwing darts with Bucky in the corner, Jane and Arthur (Thor to his friends, because of his huge muscles and the fact that he could easily bench press three hundred fifty pounds, cold) acting like lovebirds, and Trish was throwing back shots with Jessica. Natasha and Pepper were sitting, chatting, and a heavy-set guy was with them (Happy, Sam had told him – his name really was Happy Hogan, married to Pepper). Carol and Bruce were chatting at the bar, and even the surly older guy, Logan, and Wade Wilson (not part of the gardening community, but residents of the apartment building).

James Rhodes was closest to Tony, and he shook his head as he took another sip from his bottle. “He’s really booked up. Poor guy rarely gets a break.” He paused, and then grinned. “But I can tell him you asked for him.”

Steve’s cheeks flushed. “I mean – you don’t need to do that, you know.”

James clapped a hand against Steve’s shoulder. “Don’t worry; he asks Sammy about you all the time, too.”

Steve wasn’t sure if that was something positive or negative, but just then Sam came back with drinks and Steve let himself be distracted.

*

Steve was lying back, staring up at the black sky, trying not to think about his thesis project and the work piling up on him and the fact that the second job he’d found after Rumlow fired him was barely paying enough to cover everything, when the roof door opened and Tony stumbled in, wearing a highly expensive suit.

Steve sat up.

Tony didn’t seem to notice him; he made his shuffling way over to the covered pumpkins. “Hey, babies,” he murmured. “Daddy’s been having a really rough day.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

Tony started violently and swore under his breath. “Goddammit, Rogers, you’re gonna give me a heart attack!” he said, but his heart wasn’t in his words.

With a small smile, Steve patted the blanket he was lying on. “C’mon. You don’t have to talk about it; just stare up at the smog-filled sky and contemplate your life.”

“My life sucks,” Tony grunted, but he came over anyway. For a minute, Steve was about to say something about Tony’s expensive clothes, but before he could, Tony dropped on to the ground and heaved a sigh.

“You know,” Steve said quietly, “Everything in my life was just – I was picking fights at bars because I was pissed. But then Sam told me about this, and then…”

Tony chuckled a little, his eyes falling shut, and Steve tried not to look at the dark smudge of Tony’s eyelashes in the diffused light from the lamps around Clint’s plot. “I saw a giant pumpkin and thought, I could do that. It was something that wasn’t falling apart around me. My business partner tried to have me killed and was selling weapons under the table. The press hated me. I was hiding in my apartment here trying not to think about anything, and the channel was on some farming competition, and I just. I went, why the hell not?” Tony mumbled.

“I’m glad you did,” Steve whispered.

Steve hadn’t realized he was leaning over Tony, lips close to his, until Tony’s eyes opened and caught his gaze. After a few minutes, Tony licked his lips and murmured, “If I’m reading this wrong, don’t punch me.”

And Tony kissed him.

*

“Pay up, Clint.”

Steve blinked open his eyes to see Sam, James, and Clint standing over them, the sky painted in pinks and light blues. Against his chest, Tony was drooling, snoring adorably, clothes mussed after their thoroughly heavy petting session. Squinting at them, Steve scowled. “Fuck off, you three.”

“You’re gonna get sunburned if you stay up here. You should take him to your place,” Sam said, waggling his eyebrows.

“Fucker,” Steve said affectionately, and Tony jerked awake at that, blinking slow and weird at them for a moment.

“What are you doing here?” he finally asked.

“Gardening, Tones,” James rumbled, helping to lift Tony up. “Let’s go.”

Steve accepted Sam’s hand up, and nabbed the blanket. “I got him, guys. C’mon, Tony.”

“I want bacon,” Tony mumbled, and Steve smiled as he led Tony through the roof door.


End file.
